Yes, but a cache with zero reliability isn't very useful.
If I do an expensive operation, then need to use its result later, I can't rely on the HTTP cache as the browser may never have cached it in the first place, or may have evicted it by the time I go to use it. So using that unreliable cache can actually make things worse in the sense of more data usage, more power usage, more battery usage, and more memory usage.
For a real world example, say I wanted to pre-fetch a bunch of data on page-load, then in a later page I want to use the cache to be able to quickly get that information and use it without any latency. If I had some control over the HTTP cache, I could do this.
But as it stands right now, I can try to make a GET request on the page load, but when the user clicks the button to see the result on a later page, it's a crapshoot on whether or not the HTTP cache will still have it, leading to the user having to wait sometimes, and not other times, duplicated requests, and a lot more data usage.
With localstorage, IndexedDB, WebSQL, etc... I have that control. I can know that the information is going to stay there until I need it so I don't need to worry about my caching making things worse.
If I do an expensive operation, then need to use its result later, I can't rely on the HTTP cache as the browser may never have cached it in the first place, or may have evicted it by the time I go to use it. So using that unreliable cache can actually make things worse in the sense of more data usage, more power usage, more battery usage, and more memory usage.
For a real world example, say I wanted to pre-fetch a bunch of data on page-load, then in a later page I want to use the cache to be able to quickly get that information and use it without any latency. If I had some control over the HTTP cache, I could do this.
But as it stands right now, I can try to make a GET request on the page load, but when the user clicks the button to see the result on a later page, it's a crapshoot on whether or not the HTTP cache will still have it, leading to the user having to wait sometimes, and not other times, duplicated requests, and a lot more data usage.
With localstorage, IndexedDB, WebSQL, etc... I have that control. I can know that the information is going to stay there until I need it so I don't need to worry about my caching making things worse.